Apache Kafka

IoT Live Demo – 100.000 Connected Cars with Kubernetes, Kafka, MQTT, TensorFlow

You want to see an Internet of Things (IoT) example at huge scale? Not just 100 or 1000 devices producing data, but a really scalable demo with millions of messages from tens of thousands of devices? This is the right demo for you! we leveraging Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, MQTT and TensorFlow.

The demo shows how you can integrate with tens or hundreds of thousands IoT devices and process the data in real time. The demo use case is predictive maintenance (i.e. anomaly detection) in a connected car infrastructure to predict motor engine failures:

IoT Infrastructure – MQTT and Kafka on Kubernetes

We deploy Kubernetes, Kafka, MQTT and TensorFlow in a scalable, cloud-native infrastructure to integrate and analyse sensor data from 100000 cars in real time. The infrastructure is built with Terraform. We use GCP, but you could do the same on AWS, Azure, Alibaba or on premises.

Data processing and analytics is done in real time at scale with GCP GKE, HiveMQ, Confluent and TensorFlow I/O for streaming machine learning / deep learning and bi-directional communication in a scalable, elastic and reliable infrastructure:

Github Project – 100000 Connected Cars

The project is available on Github. You can set the demo up in ~30min by just installing a few CLI tools and executing two or three shell scripts.

Check out the Github project “Streaming Machine Learning at Scale from 100000 IoT Devices with HiveMQ, Apache Kafka and TensorFlow“.

Please try out the demo. Feedback and PRs are welcome.

20min Live Demo – IoT at Scale on GCP with GKE, Confluent, HiveMQ and TensorFlow IO

Here is the video recording of the live demo:

If your area of interest is Industrial IoT (IIoT), you might also check out the following example. It covers the integration of machines and PLCs like Siemens S7, Modbus or Beckhoff in factories and shop floors:

Apache Kafka, KSQL and Apache PLC4X for IIoT Data Integration and Processing

Kai Waehner

bridging the gap between technical innovation and business value for data integration, workflow orchestration, and agentic AI.

Recent Posts

Data Integration vs Workflow Orchestration: Connecting Systems Is Not Coordinating the Work

Data integration and workflow orchestration get confused because both ship hundreds of connectors. This post…

6 days ago

Process Intelligence Landscape 2026: Mining, Orchestration, and the Agentic AI Shift

Process intelligence has become three things, not one: mining, orchestration, and a decision gate. Here…

2 weeks ago

When to Use AMQP, JMS, Kafka, or MQTT: Trade-offs, Not a Winner

AMQP, JMS, Kafka, and MQTT get compared as rivals, but a message broker, a log,…

2 weeks ago

Kafka vs Flink vs Spark: Do You Really Need Real-Time?

Most vendors sell milliseconds, but most enterprise use cases do not need them. A critical…

3 weeks ago

Edge to Cloud and Back: Four Data Movement Problems, and Why One Technology Never Solves All of Them

Edge to cloud is not one integration problem. It is four: telemetry going up, control…

3 weeks ago

Data Integration Landscape 2026: Event Streaming, API, and Batch in the Era of Agentic AI

The Data Integration Landscape 2026 maps every major vendor across three communication paradigms: request-response, event-driven,…

4 weeks ago